Exploratory Study of the Privacy Extension for System Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA-Priv) to elicit Privacy Risks in eHealth

Context: System Theoretic Process Analysis for Privacy (STPA-Priv) is a novel privacy risk elicitation method using a top down approach. It has not gotten very much attention but may offer a convenient structured approach and generation of additional artifacts compared to other methods. Aim: The aim of this exploratory study is to find out what benefits the privacy risk elicitation method STPA-Priv has and to explain how the method can be used. Method: Therefore we apply STPA-Priv to a real world health scenario that involves a smart glucose measurement device used by children. Different kinds of data from the smart device including location data should be shared with the parents, physicians, and urban planners. This makes it a sociotechnical system that offers adequate and complex privacy risks to be found. Results: We find out that STPA-Priv is a structured method for privacy analysis and finds complex privacy risks. The method is supported by a tool called XSTAMPP which makes the analysis and its results more profound. Additionally, we learn that an iterative application of the steps might be necessary to find more privacy risks when more information about the system is available later. Conclusions: STPA-Priv helps to identify complex privacy risks that are derived from sociotechnical interactions in a system. It also outputs privacy constraints that are to be enforced by the system to ensure privacy.Comment: author's post-prin

Klinische Entwicklung von Kardiomyopathie-Patienten/-innen, die an der Universitätskardiologie Jena mittels Endomyokardbiopsien untersucht wurden

Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die retrospektive Analyse der Echokardiographie-Befunde von Patienten, die am Universitätsklinikum Jena untersucht wurden. Im Rahmen der Arbeitsgruppe Herzinsuffizienz wurde eine Datenbank mit 499 Patienten etabliert, die über einen Zeitraum von 2004 bis 2016 einer Herzkatheteruntersuchung mit Endomyokardbiopsie zugeführt wurden. Die Ergebnisse des gesamten Patientenkollektivs zeigten zu Beginn des Beobachtungszeitraumes für die linksventrikulären Echokardiographie-Parameter eine signifikante Verbesserung. Dieser Effekt setzte sich im Verlauf zwar nicht fort, lässt aber dennoch in Zusammenschau mit der hierzu verfügbaren Literatur auf eine Prognosebesserung und somit suffiziente Therapie schließen. Die rechtsventrikuläre Evaluation erfolgt seltener, so auch in diesem Fall. Für eine statistische Beurteilung des RVEDD und der TAPSE waren demnach nicht ausreichend erhobene Werte vorliegend. Sowohl RVEDD als auch TAPSE eignen sich jedoch zur Risikoabschätzung für Rechtsherzversagen nach LVAD-Implantation, die TAPSE kann unabhängig der linksventrikulären Funktion also Prognoseparameter eingesetzt werden. Die linksventrikulären Echokardiographie-Parameter korrelierten untereinander stark und können somit zur Einschätzung der Verlaufsentwicklung herangezogen werden. Gegenteilig verhielten sich die rechtsventrikulären Parameter, die deutlich geringer untereinander korrelierten. Veränderungen der Parameter des linken und rechten Herzens waren weitgehend voneinander unabhängig. Bezogen auf die Diagnosen DCM und Amyloidose waren die typischen echokardiographischen Befunde erkennbar, in denen sie sich folglich auch statistisch signifikant unterschieden. In der DCM-Gruppe war die LVEF signifikant eingeschränkt und der linksventrikuläre Diameter vergrößert. Die Amyloidose-Gruppe zeigte sich mit einer geringer eingeschränkten Pumpfunktion und normwertigen linksventrikulärem Diameter

Conformations of confined biopolymers

Nanoscale and microscale confinement of biopolymers naturally occurs in cells and has been recently achieved in artificial structures designed for nanotechnological applications. Here, we present an extensive theoretical investigation of the conformations and shape of a biopolymer with varying stiffness confined to a narrow channel. Combining scaling arguments, analytical calculations, and Monte Carlo simulations, we identify various scaling regimes where master curves quantify the functional dependence of the polymer conformations on the chain stiffness and strength of confinement.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, minor correction

Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem for the Microcanonical Ensemble

A derivation of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem for the microcanonical ensemble is presented using linear response theory. The theorem is stated as a relation between the frequency spectra of the symmetric correlation and response functions. When the system is not in the thermodinamic limit, this result can be viewed as an extension of the fluctuation-dissipation relations to a situation where dynamical fluctuations determine the response. Therefore, the relation presented here between equilibrium fluctuations and response can have a very different physical nature from the usual one in the canonical ensemble. These considerations imply that the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem is not restricted to the context of thermal equilibrium, where it is usually derived. Dispersion relations and sum rules are also obtained and discussed in the present case. Although analogous to the Kramers-Kronig relations, they are not related to the frequency spectrum but to the energy dependence of the response function.Comment: 15 pages, v3: final version, new text added, new reference

Economic impacts of EU clean air policies assessed in a CGE framework

This paper assesses the macroeconomic and sectoral impacts of the “Clean Air Policy Package” proposed by the European Commission in December 2013. The analysis incorporates both the expenditures necessary to implement the policy by 2030 and the resulting positive feedback effects on human health and crop production. A decomposition analysis identifies the important drivers of the macroeconomic impacts. We show that while expenditure on pollution abatement is a cost for the abating sectors, it also generates an increased demand for the sectors that produce the goods required for pollution abatement. Moreover, we find that positive feedback effects, particularly those related to health can offset the resource costs associated to the clean air policy and result in positive macroeconomic impacts for the economy of the European Union

On Feature Importance and Interpretability of Speaker Representations

Unsupervised speech disentanglement aims at separating fast varying from slowly varying components of a speech signal. In this contribution, we take a closer look at the embedding vector representing the slowly varying signal components, commonly named the speaker embedding vector. We ask, which properties of a speaker's voice are captured and investigate to which extent do individual embedding vector components sign responsible for them, using the concept of Shapley values. Our findings show that certain speaker-specific acoustic-phonetic properties can be fairly well predicted from the speaker embedding, while the investigated more abstract voice quality features cannot.Comment: Presented at the ITG conference on Speech Communication 202